How Automation Frees Up Workers for Higher Value Roles

Transcript

Stan Miller:  Hello everyone and welcome to ROK Studios.  I’m Stan Miller, I’m the PR & Analyst Relations Manager for Rockwell Automation in the EMEA Region, and I’m joined by Fred Hale.  Fred is the Chief Sales Officer and Vice President of Global Enterprise Sales for PLEX Systems.  Fred, welcome to the studio.  

Frederick Hehl:  Stan, it’s good to be here.  Thanks for having me.

Stan Miller:  So, we’re here today to talk about how automation frees up workers for higher value roles.  This is a huge topic, so I’m just going to jump right in.  Let’s start with efficiency.  Efficiency is such an important topic, right, for manufacturers.  In your opinion, what does that mean?  What does the term efficiency mean in industry today?

Frederick Hehl:  Yeah, efficiency can mean a lot of things, but quite frankly, it’s in manufacturing operations, it’s how to get more work done in less time, with less people.  So, it’s about really automating what you do on the manufacturing shop floor.

Stan Miller:  How does automation help manufacturers optimize their workforce?

Frederick Hehl:  Yes, I think we’re wrestling with maybe two issues today.  One is aging workforce, so we’ve got a lot of people in the next – you know, several years that will be retiring, and so how do you capture the information of that workforce, who’s been doing it for so long and has that cardinal knowledge.  The other problem is the younger workforce and trying to get them interested in manufacturing.  We’re trying to make it cool, trying to make it interesting for them.  So, we’ve got people going out the door faster than they’re coming in the door, so you’ve got to make that operation more efficient and there’s several ways to be able to do that.

Stan Miller:  In what ways can automation allow them to focus on more high value tasks?

Frederick Hehl:  So, for instance, you could take a pretty manual task that maybe a worker does, and it could be replacing one piece with the next piece that comes down a factory line.  If you can automate that through artificial intelligence or other types of automation and programming, you can move that individual and train that individual on a higher level task, they can add a lot more value in the organization and then they feel a lot more sense of worth and it’s a more exciting job for them, and I think you can attract a lot more talent in the door that way.  And you can do a lot of things faster in an automated fashion and have them focus on higher value activities.

Stan Miller:  How is this likely to help alleviate the current industry issues such as the skill shortage?  What’s your take on that?

Frederick Hehl:  Yeah, I think, if you look at technology in general – like I said, you want to make manufacturing cool, right.  So, the young talent that’s coming out of school, that’s trained on the highest technology – you know, in the classroom, wants to come out and see that that same sort of technology exists in manufacturing and that they would be in charge of running a cool program or an exciting opportunity to do an analysis for the company that again, has a higher value and a higher worth.  So, it’s just about, I think, attracting the new workforce with some of the cutting edge technologies that exist today.

Stan Miller:  You know, these are great topics that we’re talking about, right, I mean, using the technology to unlock what people can do, elevate their roles, what Rockwell talks about in expanding human possibility.  Fantastic.  Thank you for sharing your perspective with us today.

Frederick Hehl:  Great.  It was good spending time with you.  Thank you.

Stan Miller:  And thank you for watching.  If you’d like to learn more about automation technologies and industrial software solutions, visit www.rockwellautomation.com.